FROM Tucson, Arizona to Tokyo, it's strange how the image of the British gentleman persists around the world.

I am not talking about stiff-upper lipped stereotypes carrying umbrellas and braying, "After you, Cecil," and "No, after you, Claude," at each other.

I mean a peculiarly British brand of human decency that has something to do with good manners, tolerance and politeness.

All of that old-fashioned stuff that we used to do so well.

Foreigners have heard all about our football hooligans. Those who have travelled to our shores have experienced the Third World litter, second-rate manners and tenth- rate service. And yet foreigners just can't help believing that the British are a spectacularly civilised bunch.

Well, David Blaine just blew a big hole in that theory.

Blaine's 44-day confinement in a glass box came to its conclusion last night and in the end this rather stupid stunt told us less about the magician than it did about ourselves.

Whatever happened to that celebrated British love of eccentrics?

Whatever happened to our hatred of bullies?

Whatever happened to our support for the plucky little underdog?

Whatever happened to good manners?

From the first to the last, Blaine has been goaded, taunted and mocked.

I admit that in the beginning I enjoyed the rotten eggs, the tomatoes and the golf balls pinging off of David Blaine's lunch box. I smiled at the wily cockneys who organised loud music to keep the illusionist awake. But in the end, rather like David Blaine's breath after 44 days, it all stank to high heaven.

I have heard all the arguments about how the taunting somehow reflected well on the British people.

How it showed we were not suckers for the hype.

How it demonstrated that we are not craven worshippers of celebrity, like our American cousins. How the egg-throwing was in some grand old British tradition.

And there is possibly something in that.

The Blaine-baiters were the descendants of those sad souls who laughed at the nutters in Bedlam, or took their knitting along to public hangings.

This was yob culture in action. This was the will of the mob at its basest and most bullying.

The cretins with their loud-speakers. The sad saps chucking garbage.

The slappers who displayed their fat old buttocks and sagging breasts.

The pathetic tosspots who stood there all night chanting, "Ding, ding, ding," at the behest of some little local radio station in need of publicity. Get a life, the lot of you.

To which these losers would no doubt reply - just a bit of a laugh, innit?

Oh, you mean the endless parade of drunks in cheap suits returning home from the office bellowing, "W***er! W***er!" at Blaine every two minutes?

I thought the tears of mirth would never stop.

Medical experts say that Blaine's brain has swollen over the period of confinement.

Well, British minds are certainly getting a lot smaller.

Those photographs of the mob tell you all you need to know. They wear fixed, stupid grins as if they are expecting something riotous or hilarious to happen.

They are small, cruel people too plain dumb to see that, no matter how sad Blaine may be, they are infinitely sadder.

It would have reflected a lot better on the British public if they had bunged a couple of rotten eggs and then let the magician get on with it.

Ignoring Blaine - now that would have truly been something to be proud of, reflecting some noble essence of the British character - a loathing of pomposity, an aversion to showing off.

INSTEAD the British acted like a bunch of jeering, pea-brained bullies. And I think that's exactly what we are like today.

If the last 44 days prove anything, it is that fundamental British decency is dead.

The British gentleman - and there were as many of them in the working class as anywhere - has been replaced by the British yob.

David Blaine is clearly not the most likeable of men. From what I can make out, he is pretentious, charmless and full of himself.

But you can't crucify a man for any of that.

And we just did.

CONTEMPORARY slang

CONTEMPORARY slang is often incredibly ancient.

Every now and again a word or phrase comes along that is genuinely modern - nobody used "fit" as a term for physical beauty before the Nineties - but most slang is as old as the hills.

American teenagers can hardly get through a sentence without using the word "cool".

Yet Jonathon Green's Dictionary of Slang dates "cool" back as far as the late 19th century, when it was used in its current sense as a term for something good, fine and pleasing.

So it is with the latest addition to our language - "roasting."

Few of us had heard this term for group sex until a few weeks ago. Now we are all familiar with the innocent word and the ugly practice. "Roasting: noun (early 21st century), sex with one woman and a number of men, usually Premiership footballers."

Yet even roasting has surely been around for years in a modified form. "Spit roasting" has long meant sex between one woman and two men.

Spit roasting was always a nasty little phrase, with an aura of sadism. Roasting, with its relish at "stuffing" a woman, is surely worse.

But now we know all about roasting - which surely has more to do with humiliating a woman, than actually having sex with her - I imagine dear old spit roasting will slip from usage.

It shows how low we have sunk. A term meaning sex between one woman and two men now seems rather quaint.

PICK A BLUE BELLE

SURELY the real question for Betsy Duncan Smith and her husband to answer is: Why are Tory women always so much hotter than Labour women?

For all the talk of Blair's babes, there hasn't been a true babe anywhere near the Labour Party since Glenys Kinnock (Glenys, if you're reading this - the flame still burns).

Strange but true. No matter how poorly they are faring in the polls, the Tories are always awash with true-blue crumpet.

Why is that? Why is there nobody sitting on the Labour side, or married to a Labour MP, who looks as good as Betsy Duncan Smith?

Here is a woman in her mid-40s who has had four children, married to a man who has the worst career prospects of anyone in the country.

Yet she looks great.

Happy, supportive, radiant. Sleek, groomed, still more than capable of giving her husband a reason to come home to the constituency.

It's not just Betsy. William Hague was mocked until the mad cows came home, yet how stupid could the man really be?

He went home to the fabulous Mrs Hague while Blair was watching Cherie trying to squeeze her hips into her latest kaftan.

Do Tory women make more of an effort? Do Labour bints consider it ideologically un-sound to look too good?

Mrs Iain Duncan Smith, like Mrs William Hague before her, will never make it to No 10. Yet that dazzling smile has written an epitaph for Blair's so-called babes.